The enhancements made enable administrators to more easily, and more accurately, inventory and manage hardware assets and the software in use by Configuration Manager 2007 clients as well as import, view, and manage purchased software license information (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft). The Asset Intelligence catalog has been expanded to contain categorization and identification information for over approximately 300,000 (probably more) software titles and versions and the hardware requirements information for many software titles found in today's IT environments. The ability to customize the Asset Intelligence catalog with additional software categorization and hardware requirement information has also been added. By providing access to this essential information, Asset Intelligence 1.5 makes it easier for administrators and asset managers to more effectively plan for upgrades, migrations, and software license compliance reporting.
So, the question is how do administrators make this information available to asset managers without allowing them too much control over the actual configuration of the site and site settings?
The answer: role-based access security for Asset Intelligence information stored in the site database 
In Asset Intelligence 1.5, there are now two user role types that can be used to manage access and security permissions for Asset Intelligence catalog information: Administrator and Asset Manager.
- Members of the Asset Intelligence Administrator security role have full control permissions over catalog data and the Asset Intelligence feature set as a whole.
- Members of the Asset Intelligence Asset Manager security role have permissions to run reports, change or create software categories and families as well as access to the Asset Intelligence Configuration Manager console home page information. Members of the asset manager role can view catalog data and categorize it to a certain extent, but otherwise have no control over the configuration or management of the Asset Intelligence feature.
For more information about these roles check out this forum post:
Security access based on role in AI 1.5
Additional information about these roles, and how to configure them, will be in the next documentation release as well.
~Jeff